FOURTH ANNUAL FEMINIST ART HISTORY CONFERENCE
AMERICAN UNIVERSITY
November 8-10, 2013
PROGRAM
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8
3:00-7:00 – CONFERENCE REGISTRATION
Katzen Arts Center Rotunda
4:00-6:00 – PANELS: SESSION I
Kogod School of Business Building (KSB)
PREMODERN I
Female ‘Deviance’ and Questions of Agency in Early Modern Art
Panel chair: Andrea Pearson, American University (KSB 39)
Jessen Kelly, University of Utah
“Gender and Testimony in Dieric Bouts’ Justice of Otto III”
Michelle Moseley-Christian, Virginia Tech
“The ‘Wild Woman’ and Female Monstrosity in Early Modern European Imagery”
Risa Puleo, [Hunter College, City University of New York]
“Towards an Iconography of Female Monstrosity: Lavinia Fontana's Portrait of
Antonietta Gonzalez”
Robin O’Bryan, Harrisburg Community College
“Honorable Women, Dishonorable Actions: Princely Politics and Feminine Power
in the Camera Picta”
Sheila Barker, The Medici Archive Project, Florence, Italy
“On Her Own: Artemisia Gentileschi, c. 1612-1617”
MODERN US I
American Women Photographers: Context and Techniques in the Late 19th and Early
20th Centuries
Panel chair: Helen Langa, American University (KSB T58)
Anna Dempsey, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth
“Selling Art and Creating Community: Women Photographers, Popular
Periodicals, and the Arts and Crafts Movement”
Margaret Denny, Columbia College Chicago
“For Love and Money: Women in Commercial Photography in 19th-Century
America”
Margaret Stetz, University of Delaware
“Gertrude Käsebier: The New Woman in Black and White”
Lauren Ann Jimerson, [Rutgers University]
“Imogen Cunningham’s Straight-Photo Nudes”
Mary Brantl, St. Edward’s University
“She Who Shoots: Gender, the Darkroom, and Early Life”
MODERN/CONTEMPORARY I
Affirming and Manipulating the Female Body: 19th Century to Now
Panel Chair: Kathe Albrecht, American University (KSB T60)
Kelsey Brosnan, [Rutgers University]
“Pregnant Space in Degas’s The Bellelli Family”
Mary Hunter, McGill University
“Ladies in Waiting: Time and Gynecology in Toulouse-Lautrec’s Rue des Moulins”
Jane Chin Davidson, California State University, San Bernardino
“The New Reproductive Power: Biogenetic Imagery and the Transformation of
Nature/Culture”
Stacy Schultz, University of Texas, El Paso
“Latinas Under Construction: The Body Modifications of Liz Cohen and Regina
José Galindo”
Helen McDonald, University of Melbourne
“Vagina Wars: Feminist Art and the Commodification of Female Genitalia
Through Cosmetic Surgery”
CONTEMPORARY I
Global Feminism: Contrasts and Parallels 1900 to Now
Panel Chair: Sherry Buckberrough, University of Hartford (KSB T61)
Tal Dekel, Tel Aviv University
“Feminist Mizrahi Women Artists in Israel”
Joanna Inglot, Macalester College
“Ornament and Crime: Biopolitics and Feminism in the Work of Parastou
Forouhar”
Jacqueline Millner, University of Sydney
“Contemporary Australian Performance Art: The Feminist Legacy”
Brenda Schmahmann, University of Johannesburg
“The Emergence of Feminist Art in South Africa”
Paula Birnbaum, University of San Francisco
“Sculpting as a Modern Woman in Diaspora: Chana Orloff (1888-1968)”
6:00-7:00 – RECEPTION
Katzen Arts Center, Kreeger Lobby
7:00-8:30 – KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Katzen Arts Center, Abramson Family Recital Hall
Patricia Simons, Professor of Art History, University of Michigan
“Devotion and Desire: Women Viewers and the Case of the ‘Lesbian Nun’ in Early
Seventeenth-Century Italy”
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9
9:00-10:00 – CONFERENCE REGISTRATION AND COFFEE
Ward Building
10:00-11:45 – PANELS: SESSION II
Ward Building
PREMODERN II
Assertion and Control: Female Patrons and Subjects in Ancient and Medieval Art
Panel chair: Joanne Allen, American University (Ward 104)
Margaret Woodhull, University of Colorado, Denver
“The Agency and the Gendered Body of Architecture: Imperial Women Building
Patrons in Augustan Rome”
Lillian Joyce, University of Alabama, Huntsville
“Hadrian, Roma, and the Revealed Breast”
Joana Ramôa-Melo, New University of Lisbon
“Discussing Gender in the Middle Ages through Funerary Art: Women in
Medieval Portugal and their Commemorative Projects”
MODERN I
Female Visibility, from Genre to History, 18th and 19th Centuries
Panel chair: Norma Broude, American University (Ward 105)
Jessica Fripp, Parsons The New School for Design
“Searching for Geoffrin: Old Age, Portraiture, and the Legacy of an 18 th-Century
Patron”
Brynne McBryde, [Pennsylvania State University]
“Reclaiming the Breast: The Greuze Girl as Agent”
Jessica Cresseveur, [University of Louisville]
“Subversive Liberty: Nanine Vallain’s Challenge to Patriarchal Allegory”
Simone Zurawski, DePaul University
“Mlle. Louise Mauduit (1784-1862): Her Golden Years in the Bourbon
Restoration”
MODERN US II
Gender Matters: Critical Identities in the 1950s
Panel chair: Joan Marter, Rutgers University (Ward 107)
Kirsten Marples, [Rutgers University]
“‘Quintessential Action Painting’: An Argument for the Inclusion of Michael
(Corinne) West”
Aliza Edelman, Independent Scholar
“Fashioning Elaine de Kooning: Portraiture, Male Suits, and Faceless Men”
Sybil Gohari, Independent Scholar
“Opaque and Subtle Discourse: Unpacking the Gendered Reception of
Nonfigurative Artists Norman Lewis and Mark Tobey”
Elizabeth Maynard, [McGill University]
“Monster Masculinity: Figural Representation and Confronting Male Lack in the
Postwar Chicago Art Scene”
CONTEMPORARY II
Considering 20th Century Exhibitions and Collections in Feminist Contexts
Panel chair: Susan Sterling, National Museum of Women in the Arts (Ward 114)
Alison Boyd, [Northwestern University]
“Feminist Theory at the Barnes Foundation”
Tara Burk, [City University of New York]
“Lesbian Art and Artists: Exhibitions of the 1970s”
Jillian Sandell, San Francisco State University
“Contingent Histories and Gestural Archives: The Productive Possibilities of the
Elizabeth Sackler Feminist Art Base”
12:00-1:30 – LUNCH
American University Museum, Katzen Arts Center
1:30-3:15 –SESSION III
Ward Building
PREMODERN III
Allegorizing the ‘Virtuous’ Female in Early Modern Art
Panel chair: Mary Garrard, American University (Ward 104)
Jessica Weiss, [University of Texas, Austin]
“His and Hers Patronage: Isabel of Castile and Her Independent Identity as
Queen of Castile within the United Spanish Kingdoms”
Jutta Sperling, Hampshire College
“Charity: Mother of Allegory”
Alexandra Libby, [University of Maryland]
“Generous Gift, Courtly Maneuver: Isabel Clara Eugenia and The Triumph of the
Eucharist Tapestry Series”
Vanessa Lyon, Grinnell College
“Lesbian Baroque: Peter Paul Rubens and the Virtues of Female Desire c. 1630”
MODERN II
Inventing Media, Transforming Genres in Modern Asian Art
Panel chair: Namiko Kunimoto, The Ohio State University (Ward 105)
Christina Han, Wilfrid Laurier University
“Painting More Than Eyebrows: Practicing Art as Female Entertainers in 19 thearly 20th-Century Korea”
Elise David, [The Ohio State University]
“Transforming Male Literati Culture Into Visible Feminine Modernities: Wu
Shujuan and the Agency of Women Artists in Twentieth-Century Shanghai”
Namiko Kunimoto, The Ohio State University
“Postmodern Allegories and Katsura Yuki”
Curt Hansman, DePaul University
“Yayoi Kusama: Another Mirror”
MODERN/CONTEMPORARY II
Craft: Still Modernism’s ‘Other’ in the Late 20th Century?
Panel chair: Bibiana Obler, George Washington University (Ward 107)
Megan Brandow-Faller, City University of New York Kingsborough
“Feminine Vessels: The Ceramic Sculpture of Vally Wieselthier”
Lauren Cullen, Independent Scholar
“Proud to Hook: Matrilineage, Rug Hooking and the Canadian Palimpsest”
Louise Mayhew, [University of New South Wales]
“No Goddesses, No Mistresses: A History of the Australian Women’s Domestic
Needlework Group (c 1976-80)”
Susan Richmond, Georgia State University
“Tacky Ladies and Handicrafts For Fun: Writing an Art History of Female
Hobbyism”
MODERN III
Picturing New Women in 20th Century Europe
Panel chair: Juliet Bellow, American University (Ward 114)
Susan Funkenstein, University of Michigan
“Cut with the Kitchen Knife Revisited: Feminism and Pessimism in Images of
Dance”
Jennifer Griffiths, The American University of Rome
“Maternità Futurista: Marisa Mori and Italian Futurism”
Roann Barris, Radford University
“Creating the Complicit Self: Self-Fashioning in Soviet Russia”
3:30-5:30 – SESSION IV
Ward Building
PREMODERN IV
Controlling the Gaze?: Gender and Spectatorship in Roman and Early Modern Art
Panel chair: Kim Butler Wingfield, American University (Ward 104)
Maureen McGuire, Independent Scholar
“For the Glory of Constantine: The Systematic Removal of Images of Fausta”
Maria Maurer, University of Tulsa
“Performance Anxiety: Erotic Images, Impotency, and a Bride at the Palazzo del
Te”
Susan Shifrin, Independent Scholar
“Gendering Genre? Considering Intersections of Gender, Genre, and Viewing
Practices in the 17th Century”
Cali Buckley, [Pennsylvania State University]
“Visible Women: Early Modern Anatomical Models and the Control of Women’s
Medicine”
MODERN IV
Intersections of Art and Text: America, Britain, Mexico
Panel chair: Alison Hilton, Georgetown University (Ward 105)
Julia Dabbs, University of Minnesota, Morris
“No Mere Little Woman: The Feminist Undercurrent of May Alcott Nieriker’s
Studying Art Abroad and How To Do It Cheaply (1879)”
Valérie Fehlbaum, Geneva University
“Fin-de-Siècle British Women Art Critics”
Diane Radycki, Moravian College
“The Woman Genius and High Modernism: Virginia Woolf, Paula ModersohnBecker, and To The Lighthouse”
Nhora Serrano, California State University, Long Beach
“(Un)Tangling the Myth of Arachne: Remedios Varo's Early Modern Triptych”
MODERN/CONTEMPORARY III
Self-Representation and Constructed Identities: 20th and 21st Centuries
Panel chair: Rebecca DeRoo, Bryn Mawr College (Ward 107)
Verena Borgmann, Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum, Bremen
“Me.Myself.Naked. Paula Modersohn-Becker and Other Women Artists
Depicting Themselves Nude”
Rebecca DeRoo, Bryn Mawr College
“The Elusive Self-Portrait: Agnès Varda as Widow in L’îsle et elle”
Harriet Field, [University of New South Wales]
“Trans/Feminism: Representation of the Self in the Work of Shigeyuki Kihara”
CONTEMPORARY III
Reading Texts: Diaries, Performances, Criticism in the Late 20 th Century
Panel chair: Terri Weissman, University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana (Ward 114)
Charlotte Ickes, [University of Pennsylvania]
“Looking for Lorna”
Kimberly Lamm, Duke University
“‘The Site and Sound of Me’: Writing the Poetics of the Body in Adrian Piper’s
Food for the Spirit (1970) and Concrete Infinity Piece (1971)”
Abi Shapiro, [McGill University]
“Textual Legacies of Deceased Young Female Artists: Re-Assessing the Diaries,
Sketchbooks and Notebooks of Eva Hesse and Ree Morton”
Adair Rounthwaite, McGill University
“Sanja Ivekovic, Marina Abramovic, and the Global Politics of Hero(in)ization”
5:30-6:30 – RECEPTION
Katzen Art Center Rotunda
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 10
EVENTS AT THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS
1250 New York Avenue, NW, Washington DC
11:00 – Museum open early for FAHC attendees
Faith Ringgold: American People, Black Light
The exhibition features forty-five of Ringgold’s rarely-shown paintings from the 1960s
(see: http://www.nmwa.org/exhibitions/american-people-black-light)
12:30-2:00 – Author Conversation: Women Artists in the New Millenium with Eleanor
Heartney, Nancy Princenthal, Helaine Posner, and Sue Scott
Does it still make sense to talk about art by women as a distinct category? How does the
work of women artists reflect contemporary concerns? How are women artists faring
vis-a-vis men in the hyper-commercialized contemporary art market? Join museum
curators and the authors of The Reckoning: Women Artists of the New Millennium for a
lively conversation about the women who followed the pioneering feminist artists of the
1970s. This new book, which will be available for sale and signing, extends the
prizewinning scholarship that Heartney, Princenthal, Posner, and Scott began in After
the Revolution: Women who Transformed Contemporary Art (2007).
*The university affiliation for speakers who are graduate students is in parentheses.